Lying character — Urth Net

adam louis stephanides24 Jun 1998, 10:38original as archived

Lying character

In Castle of Days, in an essay orginally published in 1990, Wolfe complains regarding careless readers: "I have had them tell me (for example) that they were completely baffled when a scene they had read was discribed [sic] differently, later in the story, by one of the characters who took part in it; because I had not told them, 'This man's lying,' it had never occurred to them that he might be." (340) Does anybody have an idea what he's referring to? --Adam

Michael Straight24 Jun 1998, 12:16original as archived

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On Wed, 24 Jun 1998, adam louis stephanides wrote: In Castle of Days, in an essay orginally published in 1990, Wolfe complains regarding careless readers: "I have had them tell me (for example) that they were completely baffled when a scene they had read was discribed [sic] differently, later in the story, by one of the characters who took part in it; because I had not told them, 'This man's lying,' it had never occurred to them that he might be." (340) Does anybody have an idea what he's referring to?

I know this happens in the Soldier series in several places, and I think I remember that kind of thing happening in FREE LIVE FREE too, but I can't remember any specific examples. Of course much more frequent in Wolfe is for the protagonist to guess what's going on and guess wrong. Silk does that constantly, and Latro too. -Rostrum